Online-Lecture Series „Border Regimes on the Move - On the Reorganization of Europe, Migration and Labor Ten Years after the Summer of Migration“

Online Series of Events of the Centre for Global Migration Studies (CeMig) at the University of Göttingen and the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI)

March – November 2025, Thursdays, 5:15-6:45 Uhr CE(S)T (special events*** excluded)

The program can be downloaded here as PDF.
To receive the Zoom link for participation, please register using the form below.

What dynamics characterize border regimes and migration conditions ten years after the “summer of migration”? In view of the ongoing migration debate, it is urgently necessary to ask ourselves this question. In an attempt to find answers, we are taking a broad European perspective in this series of events. We want to discuss the dynamics of the political and economic preconditions of European migration policy. We assume that these dynamics are shaped by transnational and European center-periphery relations. We understand the border and migration regime both as the result and motor of geopolitics on the European continent and as a catalyst for the recomposition of migration. What is essential here is the tension between the so-called free movement of goods and labor and border closures.

So what economic and political redefinitions of a “fluid Eastern European zone” (Balibar) can be observed? How is the economic division of labor and hierarchy between Western and Central Europe's center and periphery changing, not least after Russia's war against Ukraine? What role do valorization, land grabbing and the further development of (Eastern) European peripheral and poverty zones play here? How is the organization of borders within the EU and beyond developing on this basis? What new-old social, economic, racialized inclusions and exclusions of EU citizens and third-country nationals can be observed? Does the post-2015 border and migration regime work with racist differentiation, in which some groups can now be thought of as “white” or “whiter”, while others are confronted with an intensifying practice of exclusion and racist attacks in the context of a definition as “non-Europeans”?

By discussing these questions, we want to make a contribution to the ongoing debate on the connection between border regimes and racism or the racist re-centering of the European project, as it is also being driven by growing right-wing populist movements across Europe. The central aim is to explore how the tension between the recruitment of (migrant) labor in the context of extremely segmented labor markets and jobs on the one hand and isolation and deportation on the other can be explained and how it will develop in the future.

Program

***19.03.2025, 19:30 Uhr (CET)
Film screening: „Caravan“ (OmUeng; Kino Lumière, Geismar Landstraße 19, 37083 Göttingen)
Followed by a discussion with Wasil Faizi who worked on the film with the protagonists as a mentor and translator.

Abstract

Welcome to Vienna, a city in the heart of Europe that four young men want to call home. Fawad, Marwand, Najib and Samim - supported by debut director Lucy Ashton - film themselves as they try to establish their lives, navigate growing up between cultures, and grapple with the complexities of a duplicitous, and sometimes mistrustful, Europe. Together they experience Austria’s acceptance of Fawad and Samim, and rejection of Marwand and Najib - who hide, and ultimately flee. While navigating the tricky relationship between their cameras and their stories, the young men weave a powerful tale of friendship and hope.
Afterwards, there will be an opportunity to talk to Wasil Faizi, who worked on the film with the protagonists as a mentor and translator.
Educational Preview. Admission is free.

20.03.2025, 17:15-18:45 Uhr (CEST)
“How Migration Policies Reproduce Center and Periphery Relations” (English; online via Zoom)
With presentations by:

Manuela Boatcă (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Institute of Sociology)
Marta Stojić Mitrović (The Institute of Ethnography of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia)

Abstracts

"Migration as Bargaining: Serbia’s Role at the EU’s Periphery" by Marta Stojić Mitrović
Despite the EU’s intense focus on migration, at its periphery, migration is little more than a bargaining chip—just another channel through which Serbia negotiates resources, influence, and political capital with the EU. While migration governance is framed as a matter of security and humanitarian responsibility, in practice, it operates as a transactional space where external pressures meet domestic political calculus. Amidst four months of civil disobedience in Serbia—where daily protests against corruption have spread to even the most remote villages, universities and secondary schools remain blockaded, workers take to the streets in a general strike, and municipal and state parliaments are pelted with eggs—one state function continues uninterrupted: Serbia’s role as a gatekeeper of the European Union’s external border. Despite the political turmoil, migration control remains a quiet constant, largely absent from public discourse. The only official updates come from IOM Serbia or the Facebook page of the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migrations, highlighting donations like the “Schengen Bus,” a specialized border surveillance vehicle, regional Western Balkans security meetings, self-congratulatory reports on the completion of Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) assessments, or occasional arrests of suspected smugglers. Meanwhile, reports from the field tell a different and increasingly dire story. People stranded in an intentionally dysfunctional asylum system struggle to secure a place in the dwindling number of state-run camps. Others face violent pushbacks, are forced into organized smuggling networks, or disappear into hiding. Migration governance in Serbia is shaped not by public debate but by external demands for border enforcement, containment, and deterrence. This presentation will examine how migration has been instrumentalized in Serbia’s relationship with the EU. By tracing the series of events that have led to the current situation, it will highlight the disconnect between official narratives and lived realities, revealing how policies designed to externalize European borders systematically produce precarity and violence at the periphery.
"'To Hell with Your Asparagus!' Unequal Citizenships and the EU Solidarity Discourse" by Manuela Boatcă
The European Union’s motto, "Unity in Diversity", while implicitly professing solidarity, was already disputed both internally and externally during the 2008 financial crisis and even more after the Brexit referendum. The crumbling credibility of EU unity and solidarity became all the more visible with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The political economy of cultural differences, which had already dominated discourses and policies towards refugees since the early 2000s and most clearly since 2015 was directed at other EU citizens during the pandemic, especially seasonal workers and meat plant laborers. Departing from the abstract notion of solidarity deployed in the EU discourse, the presentation will engage with the consequences of a lack of global solidarity, namely the production and reproduction of global inequalities in times of crisis, which make underlying center-periphery relations particularly visible.

03.04.2025, 17:15-18:45 Uhr (CEST)
„Border regimes as geopolitics” (English; online via Zoom)
With presentations by:

Bernd Kasparek (Delft University of Technology)
Emina Buzinkic (Institute for Development and International Relations, Zagreb)

Abstract